Manufacturing & Distribution

Manufacturing and Distribution: Building a
Successful Email Marketing Presence
Foreword
“Agriculture, manufactures, commerce and navigation, the four pillars of our
prosperity, are the most thriving when left most free to individual enterprise.”
- Thomas Jefferson
Manufacturing and distribution business owners and managers face extreme
competition at every phase of commerce. At a time when margins are being
squeezed by ever-accelerating overhead costs, and natural disasters have
disrupted global processes of JIT provision, manufacturing and distribution
businesses must take every measure to drive sales and increase turnover
volume. Experienced and knowledgeable manufacturing and distribution
managers and owners are realizing older forms of media advertising cannot
compete with the impact, power and immediacy of online communications especially at a time when smartphones, tablets, netbooks and other mobile Webenabled devices are swiftly becoming ubiquitous.
Unlike the old print and broadcast media, email and social network marketing is
affordable even for the smallest of manufacturing and distribution businesses,
generating profits on an elevated scale differentiating it from any other type or
style of marketing. In 2009, the Direct Marketing Association published a wideranging survey of email marketing return on investment and concluded that
for every dollar invested in an email marketing newsletter campaign, $43.62
was returned. There is simply no competing with the reach and sales driving
potential of email marketing.
Every type of manufacturing and distribution business can boost their
bottom line by engaging prospects through the tremendous cost efficiencies
inherent to email and social media marketing. This guide is intended to
assist manufacturing and distribution businesses currently involved in email
marketing campaigns to focus their strategies by concentrating on their core
strengths, while working to convince businesses not yet participating in email
and social network marketing to grab a piece of this lucrative and expanding
channel.
- Curt Keller
CEO
Benchmark Email

Manufacturing and Distribution: Building a Successful Email Marketing Presence

Introduction
This guide, Manufacturing and Distribution: Building a Successful Email
Marketing Presence, contains an overview of the present state of email
marketing for the use of manufacturing and distribution brand directors. The
information in this report is designed to help members of the industry heighten
their promotional efforts through the following tactics:
1. Enacting a social media and email visibility campaign that
will draw in new customers while upholding the loyalty of
current ones
2. Understanding online marketing legislation for the
manufacturing and distribution business
3. Obtaining an overview of the approaches practiced by other
manufacturing and distribution online communications
marketers
4. Practicing effective online marketing customized for your
manufacturing and distribution business to generate the greatest possible
benefits
This guide is based on a representative industry sample of manufacturing and
distribution businesses, and contains qualitative data and current statistics on
instances of email marketing in this sector. Statistical data is available in the
Manufacturing and Distribution Email Marketing Survey section.
The primary purpose of this paper is to provide information to help
manufacturing and distribution brand owners to assess the current condition
of their email marketing practices, and encourage email marketing campaign
uptake within the industry.

Background
The manufacturing and distribution business contains
an assortment of diverse business units, ranging from
multinational manufacturers with operations spread over
several continents to small regional distributors where
the owner of the business may drive their own van for
deliveries. Because of this diversity, the combined industry
email and social media marketing statistics may approach a median
distribution; additionally, larger businesses may be more likely to utilize email
marketing than smaller businesses.

Manufacturing and Distribution Business Email Marketing Statistics
The statistical data contained within this report represents a representative
variety of manufacturing and distribution businesses, arrived at through the
direct querying of sector business owners and managers.
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Manufacturing and Distribution Businesses that Engage in Email Marketing
Of the surveyed, the businesses participating in and not participating in email
marketing are roughly equal, at 44 and 43 percent respectively. The remainder
indicate a desire to employ email marketing in the future.

Manufacturing and Distribution Business Sending Frequency
Send frequencies for the manufacturing and distribution industry are as follows:

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•

20 percent: more than monthly
45 percent: monthly
13 percent: bi-monthly
17 percent: quarterly
5 percent: seasonally/annually

Manufacturing and Distribution Business Content Type
Content types for the manufacturing and distribution businesses are:

• 19 percent: informational content only
• 37 percent: sales content only
• 44 percent: information combined with sales content

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How Manufacturing and Distribution Businesses Obtain Email Subscribers
Subscriber sources for manufacturing and distribution businesses are derived
from the following areas:

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•
•
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73 percent – existing customer base
12 percent – Web-derived subscribers
6 percent – promotional results
5 percent – purchased and supplied leads
4 percent – public promotional events

Manufacturing and Distribution Business Email Subscriber List Size
The list size of manufacturing and distribution businesses is considerably larger
than for other industries: just 16 percent report less than 500 entries on their
subscription list. Thirty-three percent claim between 500 and 1,000; 34 percent
report between 1,000 and 3,000; 11 percent state 3,000 to 5,000; and 6 percent
show more than 5,000 email addresses on their list.

Manufacturing and Distribution Business List Segments
A scant 18 percent of all owners and managers report segmenting their lists,
while 82 percent do not.

page 3


Email Open Rates for Manufacturing and Distribution Business Campaigns
Of the 45 percent of manufacturing and distribution business owners able to
quote their email open rates…
• 3 percent claim less than a 15 percent open rate
• 17 percent report between a 15 and 25 percent open rate
• 18 percent state a rate between 25 and 40 percent
• 7 percent show an open rate of more than 40 percent

Versus Industry Open Rates
At 26.7 percent, the manufacturing and distribution open rates adhere closely to
the all industries median of 25.3 percent.

Manufacturing and Distribution Business Subscriber Click-Through Rates
Sixty-one percent of manufacturing and distribution business owners and
managers could not report a click-through rate. Of the remainder: 19 percent
showed a rate of less than 5 percent; 9 percent claim between 5 and 10 percent;
7 percent, between 10 and 15 percent; and 4 percent, a rate of more than 15
percent.

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Versus Industry Click-Through Rates
As was the case with open rates, the manufacturing and distribution industry
click-through rate of 4.9 percent is comparable to the all industries standard of
4.3 percent.

Manufacturing and Distribution Industry Discussion
Most manufacturing and distribution businesses are ill-equipped to provide
their customers with white papers, educational newsletters, press releases,
e-books, videos or blogs. These are the bread and butter of modern marketing
and present a challenge for manufacturing and distribution businesses engaged
in exclusively conventional promotions.
As a manufacturing and distribution manager, business owner or marketer, the
fact is this: the majority of your customers are probably online this very minute.
You don’t have to hire additional staff or purchase expensive hardware to reach
them, either. Any desktop computer connected to the Internet will allow
you to interact with a capable, experienced, professional email service
provider able to execute all elements of an email marketing campaign
on your behalf.
One of the primary keys to achieving success through email and social
network marketing is to understand conventional advertising is lost on
a population that lives on computers and mobile Web-enabled devices. Many
manufacturing and distribution businesses are applying the B.E.S.T. formula
in order to comprehend and facilitate the creation of the type of content that
engages an online customer base:
Behavioral – Acknowledge that everything you communicate to
your customers must have an obvious purpose. Ask yourself what
you want your customer to do: solicit contact, submit a form, sign
up for an email newsletter or complete a survey? Ensure there is a
clear and valid action you want your customer to take that benefits
both your business and the customer.
Questions to ask: What action do you want the customer to take? How will you
measure their reactions? How do you want the customer to feel? How can you
facilitate their purchase?
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Essential – Any missive you send must have a clear and necessary purpose for
the prospect that circles back to your products and services but also finds a way
to help them with a challenge or brings something positive to their interactive
experience. How do rising energy costs affect them in relationship to your
products and services? What tips can you provide to your customer to save
energy, money, time and effort? What trends in your industry are likely to affect
them? Think: information, education and entertainment.
Questions to ask: What does the purchaser need to know? How can my content
be presented for maximum effect? What media works best for presenting this
particular content?
Strategic – Though you want the customer to be delighted by your
missives, remember that your primary purpose is to engage them
in order to drive sales and traffic. Your online activities must be
seamlessly integrated into your overall business plan.
Questions to ask: Does this email content fit into our overall
strategies? Does this effort assist in reaching the company’s strategic goals? Can
we engage in this conversation without it seeming too much like a thinly veiled
sales pitch?
Targeted – The best content is highly targeted to your prospects. You must
determine the demographic, geographic and behavioral characteristics of your
base and use those factors in your email segmentation and testing efforts.
Capture their attention and their loyalty; speak in their language about topics
close to their interests. Then dovetail this conversation into legitimate ways
your products and services can fulfill those needs.
Questions to ask: Have you identified the customers you want to target? Do
you understand their motivations? Can you put yourself in their position and
view your offerings through their eyes?
Approaches to email marketing must vary from facility to facility, location to
location and even time to time: manufacturing and distribution businesses
need to implement a series of well thought out procedures in order to keep a
customer base motivated in a slow economy, taking
into account high rates of unemployment, small
business and personal loan financing and even the
impact of natural disasters on consumers.
Fine tuning the content of your email marketing
campaign to cater to the location of your business
and your particular demographic and behavioral
customer profiles can be critical to achieving success. Online communications
experts know the best way to achieve innovative focus is to apply segmentation

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methodologies to your subscriber list. By separating out your email address
entries according to demographic, geographic and behavior based categories,
you will develop targeted content that fulfills the preferences and requirements
of your customer base.

Manufacturing and Distribution Business Email Marketing Goals
Whether your facility is a small distributor or importer with limited warehousing
space or a leading manufacturer comprised of multinational facilities and acres
of robotic assembly lines, your email marketing strategy must be engineered to
appeal to a steady flow of new customers from single order companies to main
line clients. Each of these customers requires a particular type of information
about your manufacturing and distribution business to inform them, educate
them and assure their return.
Short Term Goals
An email marketing campaign expertly designed to meet the complete
requirements of your manufacturing or distribution business, as well as your
own individual preferences, can be expected to provide these types of results
over the short-term:

• Competitive advantage
• Customer participation in additional events and
•
•
•
•
•
•

occurrences
Enterprise loyalty
Expansion of online presence and authority
New customers
Location recognition
Same quarter sales
Word of mouth

Long Term Goals
Manufacturing and distribution businesses may anticipate a long term,
professional email marketing campaign will produce:

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•
•
•
•

Enterprise loyalty
Expansion of customer base
Competitive advantage
Higher traffic for a broader range of SKUs
Increased cooperation from suppliers and
related businesses (transportation, equipment,
fixture and supply wholesalers)
• Online authority translating
sector market leadership
• Trade media visibility
• Year on year sales

to

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A long term email campaign will have a clear effect on every aspect of any
business. The full range of products and services your manufacturing and
distribution business may provide is likely unknown to your prospects, and
there is no other promotional opportunity that comes close to the impact
and return on investment of properly implemented and well-designed email
marketing. A successful campaign must take note of the following factors:

Implementation
Email marketing is different from placing a listing in the Yellow Pages or Thomas
Register, or running an ad in trade magazines, newspapers, radio or television:
the legal requirements for online advertising are much more strict, particularly
concerning how a customer is approached and marketed to.

Compliance
Your manufacturing or distribution business should retain
documented consent from clients prior to placing them on
your subscription list.

Federal CAN-SPAM Law Violations Are a Crime
The US CAN-SPAM Act regulates email marketing and how businesses must
interact with clients online. CAN-SPAM is “opt-out” legislation, requiring all
commercial business units to immediately act upon a subscriber’s request to be
removed from an email list serve. Failure to comply with this legislation opens
up a business owner or manager to heavy fines and potential sentencing.

Make It Easy to Unsubscribe
Your manufacturing or distribution business must immediately comply with a
customer’s request to be removed from your subscriber list. Additionally, every
email you send must contain an easy to see, easy to enact link allowing the user
to opt out of your online services (often known as an unsubscribe link).

Manage Bouncing Emails
When your manufacturing or distribution business sends out an email regardless of whether it is a personal message, a business reply or an email
newsletter - one of three different things will occur.

• The send is delivered as planned.
• The send is delayed due to a problem with your customer’s

email account or some network problem. This is called a soft
bounce.
• The send will be delivered because the email address cannot
be found or has been blocked. This is called a hard bounce.
If your email bounces, you will receive a message from an Internet function
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called Mailer Daemon, informing you of the problem and explaining the
reasons for the bounce. Soft bounces are an issue with the user’s
system, and it is suggested that you attempt to contact them
via other means to alert them of the situation. In the case of a
hard bounce, it is necessary to remove that user’s address from
your list: if you continue to send missives to a blocked address,
eventually your address will be placed on a spam blacklist, and
you will no longer be able to send any sort of email – business or
personal – from your address.

Privacy Policy
It is important that you have a privacy policy drafted for your specific business
unit. Though it may be tempting to visit a competitor’s website and “borrow”
their policy language, your privacy policy must be tailored to your specific online
business activities in order to protect you from legal liability. Always contact an
industry-specific business attorney and craft your own privacy policy.

Segment Your List
Segmenting your subscriber list will help expand your customer base and
better serve your current clients. A customer operating a single corner store
location has different requirements than a national chain purchasing agent:
segment your list to create separate email campaign content for different
demographic and behavior patterns. This ensures each category receives offers
and information relevant to their interactions with your manufacturing or
distribution company.

Test Your Ongoing Content
The A/B split is a popular and effective test that allows
you to determine how your customer base will respond to
varying specific elements within an email. By changing just
one parameter, such as the preheader or the subject line,
and analyzing the open and click-through rates, you will be able to
determine how your subscribers react to isolated changes. Their reactions and
responses will allow you to craft a more focused email strategy for the future.

A

B

Capture Your Customer’s Personal Data
Like many consumers, manufacturing or distribution clients may be hesitant to
turn over their personal information to your campaign efforts. However, your
business needs this data for critical segmentation efforts. Many manufacturing
and distribution outlets have discovered the most effective way to retain this
data is through incentivized surveys, which draw information from customers
by providing discounts, personalized prizes or other items.

Analyze Your Customer’s Behavior
Open and click-through rates are primary indicators of subscribers’ behavior
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towards your manufacturing or distribution business. From these metrics, you
will discover three types of consumers.

• Consumers who do not open your emails ever and should be
removed from your list

• Consumers who may open your emails but never click

through to your call to action and should remain on the list,
lest they be engaging your business through other modes of
communication

• Consumers who open your emails and respond to your call to

action and should remain on your list; these are your most valuable
clients

Best Email Practices
Manufacturing and distribution businesses should always strive to follow best
email practices, including:
1. Preheaders and subject lines composed with great care
2. Updated email templates that can handle video and varying display
characteristics to work on different browsers and Web-enabled mobile
devices
3. Multiple landing pages featuring targeted content to dovetail with your
segmentation efforts and A/B split testing

Benchmark as Your Manufacturing and Distribution Business’ Email
Marketing Expert
Comprehensively Renew Your Email Marketing Strategy
Benchmark Email is a widely renowned email marketing service provider with
more than 73,000 satisfied clients. Join us today and engage our marketing
pros to reach out to your customer base and exceed your online
communication goals at a reasonable price and unbelievable
ROI. After years of serving the email marketing needs of
manufacturers and distributors, Benchmark Email is proposing
a new Manufacturing and Distribution Email Marketing solution
to ensure that your email and social media marketing goals
are successfully delivered and integrated. Benchmark Email’s
powerful Do It Yourself Web-based solution puts our awardwinning email software in your hands.

Choose to Have Benchmark Email’s Renowned Marketing Pros Do It for You
Your manufacturing or distribution business can reach the next level of online
marketing by taking advantage of Benchmark Email’s proprietary We Do It for
You Full-Service Email Marketing procedure. This service engages Benchmark
Email’s experts to implement the functions of your email and social media
page 10


marketing as if they were working at your own company.
The email and social media promotional experts at Benchmark Email can
engineer custom-designed templates for vibrant display on cross-platform
devices; Benchmark’s Real Time Email Reports are extremely
easy to understand and provide you with a total perspective
about current and historical campaign metrics, enabling
your to make accurate determinations about how your
campaign is performing. The online marketing experts at
Benchmark Email will prominently promote your business
on the most popular social media sites by posting directly
on your Facebook Fan Page and publishing your email newsletter links through
your Twitter account.

Industry Standard Features
You can select Benchmark Email’s powerful Do It Yourself or our We Do It for You
service. Campaign features include:
Advanced Message Scheduling – Benchmark Email will set up
your communications to be issued at any time or date you want
by using advanced auto-responding technology. Set countdown
timers keyed to any specific occurrences you wish, including
renewal date, anniversary date or the customer’s birthday.
Comprehensive Video Integration – Benchmark Email
provides a state of the art email video process that allows for
running times of any duration. This delivery system can incorporate educational
and entertaining content while keeping file sizes to a minimum.
Contact List Management - Benchmark Email can implement advanced
technologies to assist you in managing your entire permission-based contact
list; this allows for segmentation processes that target subscriber categories
based on geographic, demographic and behavior features.
Delivery Assurance - Benchmark Email is proud of its long history of
collaboration with leading worldwide ISPs: it is these relationships that are
responsible for our consistently high email delivery rate. Benchmark Email’s
remarkable delivery assurances are based on a policy of best practices and antispam features, ensuring your manufacturing or distribution business benefits
from a stellar email reputation.
Expertise & Technology – The infrastructure operated by Benchmark Email
has been engineered to be responsive, reliable and powerful - allowing for any
format of email - including HTML, plain text and video - to be swiftly delivered
to your customer’s inbox.

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Full Tracking Reports Incorporating Visual Graphs - Benchmark Email’s
extensive email tracking reports offer a comprehensible, graphic illustration
of your email marketing metrics. Each data category is also explained in plain
English - without resorting to convoluted technical jargon.
High Volume Plans - If your manufacturing or distribution business’ email
subscription list exceeds 100,000 addresses, Benchmark Email will activate
technology to make your large-scale sends efficient and effortless.
Polls and Surveys - Benchmark Email’s customizable surveys and
polls allow your manufacturing or distribution business to target
segmentation results according to the latest data provided directly
by your subscribers.
Social Media Tools - Benchmark Email will promote you on popular social
media sites such as Facebook and Twitter in order to tally up the most “Shares”
and “Likes,” engaging your social media customers in the bilateral conversations
in conjunction with familiar branding.
Templates – The highly experienced graphics, content and programming
professionals at Benchmark Email have engineered hundreds of targeted
templates to best represent your manufacturing or distribution business’ email
marketing image. The designers at Benchmark Email can even create a customtailored template for your exclusive use.

Benchmark Email Understands Your Manufacturing and Distribution
Business
In order to achieve success in your manufacturing or distribution business’
email and social media marketing campaigns, take into consideration the main
vectors of potential subscriber email address collection:

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•

Community involvement and volunteering
Concerts, sports and other mass events
Holiday promotions
Local and regional promotions
Promoting word of mouth
Supplier co-ops
Sweepstakes and contests
Team sponsorships
Trade show and expo presence

Results
The powerful traffic results manufacturing and distribution businesses will
benefit from while engaging in the premium level of Benchmark Email’s package
of services include:

page 12


•
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Cost / Benefit analysis
Ease of information exchange
Professional liaison
Quick launch
Scalability
Sustainability

Analyze How Your Manufacturing and Distribution Business Can Profit
from Benchmark Email’s Services
Benchmark Email’s Do It Yourself package is capable, powerful and
comprehensive; the We Do It for You package incorporates every facet of an
email marketing campaign by placing the entire job with Benchmark Email’s
professional marketing division. Regardless of which service selection you
choose, your business will see a serious increase in bottom line results.
When you notice your shipping and receiving department
is backed up because of a flood of new orders, you will be
happy you entrusted your email and social media promotions
to Benchmark Email’s Manufacturing and Distribution Email
Marketing Service. Your customers are waiting to read your
message so they can be informed about the quality SKUs you are
ready to ship today!

page 13


About Benchmark Email
Take powerful features by the dozen, sophisticated list management, hundreds of email
templates, ultra-precise reports and dazzling email and video email. Now, package all that
together for an extremely affordable price. Sound appealing? That’s us.
There’s a reason – or 100 – that more than 73,000 users trust us with their email marketing
campaigns. With a second-to-none feature set, headache-free tools that make every
campaign a snap and extremely reasonable price plans, we’re the email marketing service for
businesses of all shapes and sizes.
At Benchmark, we’re more than email marketing experts, we’re innovators. Our main aim is
to perfect our email marketing service, but we also follow social networking, search engine
optimization (SEO) and Web 2.0 just so our 100% Web-based software is completely
compatible with the ever-changing Internet world.
No other service gives you this robust, standard range of features for just $9.95 a month to
start. Find out for yourself by enrolling in our free, 30 day trial
www.benchmarkemail.com/register.
Contact Benchmark Email
We welcome your feedback and would love to talk with you about your email marketing
needs. Please contact us at the addresses below.
Website: http://www.benchmarkemail.com/
Call: 800.430.4095
Email: sales@benchmarkemail.com

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